Transition Benefiting From Best Practice Sharing

The acquisition of Southwest Metal Finishing and Inventix Mfg.

Within a day after closing on May 2nd, Lincoln Industries people were already onsite, working together to share information. Today, two months later, best practices continue to be shared both ways.

“We are using our expertise to solve the issues they are having with quality, delivery, and turn times,” said LeBaron. “At the same time there is a lot we are learning from them. Their expertise in die casting and plating on aluminum and zinc is well known. We are also sharing the systems that have been put into place to ensure quality and on time delivery. Over time we will be implementing the IT systems we use at Lincoln. Our IT people help us manage specific business activities we use to serve customers.”

Lincoln Industries IT Manager Slavic Stepanyuk, says his plan is to roll out the company’s ERP system in the future, but in the meantime his team has been providing other IT support at the facilities.

“Our ERP of choice is Dynamics NAV,” he said, “and it provides us with control over our business practices. It makes information flow, reduces many manual processes, provides information that allows people to perform their jobs, and allows us to effectively communicate with customers. It takes information, plans our operations, and from the time a forecast is given to when the parts are delivered.”

“By strengthening their IT systems, we will improve their ability to support the organization,” he said.

“There will also be networking upgrades and implementation of a business continuity plan, a system of necessary redundancies to their system,” he said. “We have also made our Help Desk available to the people at the new facilities. This has improved responsiveness to their immediate IT needs. Our goal is to help and assist in any way we can to enhance their IT support.”

IT support is not the only best practice being shared. Quality, operations and environmental people have also been onsite providing support.

“We’ve seen a very positive response to our work,” said Stepanyuk. “They’re excited about the additional support. We have already accomplished a lot by building relationships and becoming a part of one team. They know we will work together to make things better.”